I'll be home this evening and Eddie and I (and Joni our cat :-) will carve our pumpkin after dinner and then pass out candy to the kids in the neighborhood. It should be fun, hopefully it won't be as cold as it has been the last few days.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Actor Max von Essen, who is openly gay, decided he was tired of people who call themselves his friend supporting Mitt Romney for president. So the actor, currently appearing in the Broadway revival of “Evita,” wrote an open letter to a friend on Facebook asking him and everyone else who backs Romney and his vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan, to defriend him. His message, which is contained in the letter he posted below, is that he doesn’t want friends who don’t care about his civil rights.

”Listen, I know you didn’t mean any harm commenting on this post and I like you, we had some great times growing up. But Romney and Ryan believe that I am less than you. They believe I am a second-class citizen and don’t deserve the same rights that you had the privilege of being born into simply by being straight. They want to add a constitutional amendment that will ban gay marriage forever. It will set us back decades and ensure that I never legally have the opportunity to have a family or a partner in my lifetime.“They also believe that being at your partner’s side when he/she is dying is a benefit, not a civil right. They could keep me from my partner dying in a hospital. Could you even imagine something like that in your own life? Being separated from your wife on her death bed? Could you imagine your marriage never being recognized and being told that your family is not a family and you do not deserve any federal rights that comes with marriage. Over 1,100 rights. Did you know that? 1,100.“Ryan doesn’t believe in the hate crimes act fought unwaveringly for by Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard, murdered for being gay in Wyoming. Murdered for being gay. Could you imagine if I was murdered for being gay? Could you really look my mom in the eye and say ‘oh well, we can not prosecute this crime as a hate crime’?“I know there are important issues involved in this campaign. I know people are suffering and the economy has not improved at a rate we all wish it would. Yes, people are suffering but the gay and lesbian community has been suffering for hundreds of years and I am so tired of it. So tired of feeling that I am less than. So tired of knowing I have friends on here who will vote for someone who will keep me a second class citizen for my entire lifetime. I have already spent half a lifetime hiding, half a lifetime conforming. It is exhausting, demeaning and I am worn out. I want to love myself full out. I want a president who can look me in the eye and say ‘You are equal!’ ‘You are equal to everyone else in this country and I will fight for your rights. The time is now and it is long overdue.’ Romney and Ryan could not look me in the eye and say that and I feel sorry for every gay and questioning child who might have to listen to a president who believes that he/she is not equal. Children will take their lives. It is the WORST form of trickle down bullying and it absolutely splits my heart in half. When the president says you are less than, it gives permission to every authority figure, every politician, every teacher, every bully on the playground to push you around and bully you and treat you less than. It is dangerous and lives will be lost.“If this is not important to you, please remove me from your friends list. I need people in my life who love me and consider me 100 percent equal.”

*******

This is what courage looks and sounds like... Unless and until each of us is ready, able and willing to stand up to oppression and call upon our friends to do likewise, there will be little progress in our struggle for civil rights and a better life for us all.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

A Letter from an Invert: 1919. Through the early part of the twentieth century, American medical and psychological writers began taking an increasing interest in homosexuality (or “sexual inversion,” “contrary sexual feeling,” “perverted sexual instinct,” or any number of other terms which they had yet to settle on).

One of the professional journals to actively investigate all aspects of sexology was the Journal of Urology and Sexology under the editorship of William J Robinson, a physician, sexologist , birth control advocate, and department head of Genito-Urinary Diseases at Bronx Hospital Dispensary.

But it was rare to hear from “inverts” themselves. Last July, we reprinted one letter to the editor from 1919 which gave some indication of the frustration that many felt due to the severe societal disapproval that was prevalent a the time (see July 30). Three months later, that same journal published another letter “from an invert”:

To the EDITOR:I know you will disagree with me, but it is my belief that two men who love each other have as much right to live together as a man and woman have. Also that it is as beautiful when looked at in the right light and far more equal!There are many men who believe as I do. One might say they are abnonnal. Does that have anything to do with the right or wrong of the question? To sleep all day, to work all night, is an abnormal condition. It isn’t natural. Does that go to prove that the one who does it is right or wrong? There is that abnormal condition; to bring in a moral question would be foolishness. “Wrong” and “abnormal” seem to mean the same thing to many people. Or shall I put it — “wrong” and “unnatural”? From the way people look at me who know my belief, you would think me a leper or a negro! *May I not have as high an ideal in my love toward men, as a man has towards a woman? Higher, no doubt, than most men have toward women? Higher, no doubt, than most men have toward women!The idea people hold is making me bitter. All that I might be is being killed. I can understand the thoughts of Jean Valjean, who held to his high ideals and asked only to be left alone — yet had to lose his whole life fleeing, ever fleeing, from people.I wish the question might be discussed in your magazine. I have never known of any other magazine which gave its readers the liberty of expressing their own opinions, as gladly as your magazine does.There are reasons (position, etc.) why it would be better to withhold my name. You need not doubt the good faith in which this letter is written.A MAN [?].

Jean Valjean is the protagonist in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Misérables, which follows his 19-year-long struggle with the law for stealing bread to feed his sister’s children. The editor appended this footnote to the letter:

* This sentence shows that the writer is no more broadminded on the racial question than most people are on the subject of sexual abnormalities and perversions.-W. J. R.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Friday, October 26, 2012

I usually refer to videos and films depicting same gender loving romances as "The Imitation of Life..." I do that because they do somewhat reveal the depths of the emotion we call love. In my own life, I've experienced the intensely passionate feelings that true love inspires. It looks like this...

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

From a web series continuation of the 2007 hit, "The DL Chronicles..." Surprisingly, it's taken nearly five years for the series to be revived in its original half-hour cable television format despite its tremendous world-wide success and appeal in speaking to the experiences of some black same gender loving men...

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

"The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history."

Tonight, many of us will watch the debate, and some will say we'll be watching to help us make up our mind on who we'll vote for in just two weeks from now. But if you are a GLBT person, you don't need to watch the debates to make up you mind, simply watch this and then ask yourself these two questions:

Has any president in history ever done more to promote your rights to equality under the law than Barrack Obama?Remembering the mess that the country was in at the beginning of his term (war, economic crisis, societal upheaval), are you as a GLBT citizen, better off today than you were then?

So watch and enjoy the debate tonight, but make up your mind right now! For the future of our country and the future of GLBT people everywhere, there is only one clear choice - Support the candidate who has stood with us - vote Obama - Biden.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

I personally believe that the Bible contains many points of wisdom, some of it divine. But I know it is also rife with error, hate, and incomprehensible evil. This seemingly insane rant from an 'activist pastor' proves my point... It is clear from this speech that he is recounting the same tired litany of dire outcomes that will result if GLBT people are not marginalized and allowed to be discriminated against or worse... But if you listened carefully and all the way to the end, you realized that his speech is really a wake up call to all of us and his community... He's showing us quite powerfully that the same ignorance that people allowed to destroy the humanity of others in the past is the same ignorance that is being directed at GLBT people as they seek their rights today. I am dumbfounded and amazed at his ability to use the hate that in the past has spewed forth from the mouths of supposedly good and learned men who claim to speak for and about God to show us the error of our ways even today... Thank you, Pastor Snider. This is one of the things I'm thinking about this Sunday.

Positive images of people like me... The truth of the matter is that we all need to see people like ourselves. So everyday, I'll post a photo, drawing or some other artwork that depicts Same Gender Loving People as what we are... Only Human.

After I came out, someone once asked me, "What is it that you want...?" My answer was simply this, "Peace, Love and Happiness, the same things you want from your life." This election day, Washington state is one of four states that can begin to make that possible by establishing marriage equality...

Saturday, October 20, 2012

To begin, then, with a preface: this outcry will not endear me to our gay community and even less to my closest friends. There is no need to prolong the reason why, either. I’ll be blunt, as usual. Our community is filthy. Drug use (let alone abuse!) is rampant from the youngest of us to the oldest of us. Promiscuous sex is envied and looked upon as a benefit to our character – experience and accomplishment if you will. Perhaps it is a free-spirited attitude which takes us here. I fear that is not the case at all. It is a careless and irresponsible personality which will allow themselves to become so blinded by reckless desire that gives us this hue.

So what? Why should I care if the majority of the men in the bars and clubs are there to pick up a trick for a quick night of sexual fun? Why should it matter to me? Primarily I am concerned about health. If for no other reason, I advocate protected sex with as few intimate partners as possible. Secondly, I care about whether or not (at least to myself) I am going to be able to share true love and intimacy in the bedroom. If I can detach myself from emotion for sex with a random stranger over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, how much harder it will be to form an intimate and romantic connection with another person whom I only wish I could give that sentiment to?

So what? Why should I care if the majority of the men in the bars and clubs are drugging themselves senseless and partying themselves into oblivion? Care not for the morrow, right? Absurd. This is even more unthinkable to me because of the health effects of drugs to begin with. Secondly, it’s a sure mark of human failure to cope and a mark of low morals anyways.

We’re looking for that one true love, right? I seriously doubt you’ll find it in this community in which a great deal of youths are worshiping their bodies, pleasure and recklessness. In a community where the greatest of pleasures is to get fucked up on meth and then get fucked in the ass by whoever is available is the most disgusting, disgraceful practice I can imagine. Little wonder the outside world – the normal and average American – looks on this community with such horror and distaste. What can we possibly hope to achieve in this state of existence whereby all we can muster is devoted to selfish pleasures of the lowest caliber?

I say, grow up. I say, be responsible. I say, care for yourself and for each other. I say, live! I say, fill your mind with knowledge! I say, take care of your life! I say, hold yourself up to be a moral bastion and role model! I say, again, grow up or die.

Perhaps my vision of an upright and moralistic homosexual community asks too much. I don’t consider myself better than anyone else, for that would be a truly pointless position to take. What I consider myself to be is an upright young man who has only recently been disillusioned by the filth I witness on every corner of the gay scene.

I have a few requests, if I may be so bold! First, let’s not look at each other as pieces of meat waiting to be tasted. Let’s hold ourselves to a higher standard and realize that we are all in the same boat together, we have similar wishes, desires and dreams. We have similar problems to confront. We are not isolated and cannot live without each other.

Secondly, let’s respect our bodies and respect others enough to tell them that drug use is not acceptable, let alone admirable. To turn your eyes blindly away from this problem is to invite disaster and to endorse/enable this abuse to continue unopposed.

Open your eyes and see what is around you. Sexual gratification is not the be all of existence. A high is not the fulfillment of enlightenment. To act as though these were the keys to happiness and success is to be one common presence at the table of gay people. Congratulations. You have entered the norm of gay life. I, myself, intend to resign from this community. I will have no part in it. It is not a world into which I wish to bring children and raise a family. It is not a community I am proud to belong to.

And although I frequently use the term "gay" in describing myself and other GLBT people, I do so as a matter of convenience only (and truthfully as a way to escape needing to be very much more specific about who I am). But certainly, "Gay" is not my preferred "label" of choice for all the reasons Lewis enumerates above. In fact, (as you know) I greatly prefer the term "same gender loving" (SGL) as my self-identification, as it for most people far more accurately describes the character of the life I choose to lead. And I find that the distinction is significant because at least thus far, SGL does not conjure the negative stereotypes (based in hard to accept truths) that many of our most vehement and vocal opponents point to as their justification for keeping us second-class citizens to be condemned and pitied at best, and at worst made out to be heinous criminals worthy of imprisonment or even death.

Although these thoughts about the "gay community" that Lewis brings to our attention here are hard to acknowledge, acknowledging the truth and seeking our freedom from our own self-destruction is the only way to overcome what really is wrong with being a part of the "gay community." I agree with Lewis Breland, very often, "it is not a community I am proud to belong to. And as I always share, remember that... "Fear Eats the Soul...." and the truth shall set you free.

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